Plaintiff
Dorothy Smulley believes that various banks and related
financial entities have engaged in a criminal racketeering
enterprise under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act (RICO). Her allegations stem from the
defendants' involvement with the financing and servicing
of plaintiff's mortgage loan for a condominium and a
longstanding dispute that plaintiff has had with her
condominium association about the assessment and payment of
fines and fees.

Defendants
have moved to dismiss the complaint. Because I conclude that
plaintiff has not alleged facts that give rise to plausible
grounds to conclude that any of the defendants have taken
part in a criminal racketeering scheme or any other violation
of federal law, I will grant defendants' motions to
dismiss plaintiff's federal law claims. I will decline to
exercise supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff's
remaining state law claims and will therefore dismiss the
complaint without prejudice to plaintiff's pursuit of any
state law remedies in the state courts of Connecticut.

Background

Plaintiff's
amended complaint alleges facts that I accept as true for the
purposes of this motion to dismiss to the extent that such
factual allegations are not legally conclusory. The complaint
stems from a long-running dispute and other litigation
between plaintiff and her condominium association, the
Oronoque Shores Condominium Association No. 1 Inc.
(Oronoque), in Stratford, Connecticut. Plaintiff alleges that
in October 2011, she began receiving letters from attorneys
for Oronoque-the law firm of Zeldes, Needle & Cooper
(ZNC)- accusing plaintiff of violating Oronoque's bylaws
and demanding payment of a fine. Between November 2011 and
April 2012, plaintiff repeatedly contacted ZNC for
clarification about which bylaws she had violated, but ZNC
did not respond.

At the
end of April 2012, plaintiff received an invoice for a fine
of nearly $10, 000 from Imagineers, which was Oronoque's
property management company. This invoice indicated that the
fine was being assessed for unauthorized additions and
alterations to her condo. Plaintiff disputed the fine, and on
June 15, 2012, she filed a lawsuit in Connecticut state court
challenging the fine. Her state court lawsuit named as
defendants ZNC, Imagineers, and certain individuals employed
by ZNC and Imagineers.

In July
2012, Oronoque returned plaintiff's annual common charge
assessment, which she had made payable to Oronoque, and
requested that she make it payable to ZNC. Plaintiff was also
instructed to direct her monthly common charge assessments to
ZNC. Because plaintiff believed she had no obligation to ZNC,
she refused to reissue her checks to ZNC. Instead, she
continued to make the checks payable to Oronoque and to mail
them to Imagineers, and Oronoque continued to return the
checks to her. In response, plaintiff began depositing the
returned checks into Oronoque's bank account at Webster
Bank.

In
August 2012, Oronoque filed suit against plaintiff in state
court over plaintiff's alleged violations of
Oronoque's bylaws. Then, in November 2012, Oronoque filed
a foreclosure action against plaintiff, alleging non-payment
of common charge assessments. Meanwhile, plaintiff continued
to deposit her payments for the common charge assessments
into Oronoque's account at Webster Bank. Plaintiff
alleges that Oronoque's foreclosure lawsuit was false and
misleading, because Oronoque knew that plaintiff was current
in her payment of common charge assessments and that the
allegation of non-payment was for other unpaid charges
including the fine previously levied against her.

The
complaint goes on to describe various machinations designed
to avoid accepting plaintiff's payment of her common
charge assessments. In June 2013, Webster Bank suddenly
refused to accept plaintiff's deposits into
Oronoque's bank account, even though it had previously
been accepting such payments. In response to Webster
Bank's refusal, plaintiff began depositing her common
charge assessments into Oronoque's account at
People's United Bank. According to plaintiff, Oronoque
subsequently closed its accounts at Webster and People's
United Bank in order to prevent plaintiff from making any
more payments. Oronoque also blocked plaintiff from making
online payments to its account at Mutual of Omaha Bank. In
November 2013, plaintiff began paying her common charge
assessments via electronic wire transfers from her bank into
Oronoque's account at Mutual of Omaha Bank.

While
enmeshed as described above in multiple state court lawsuits
involving her condominium association payments, plaintiff
filed this federal lawsuit in July 2014 against Oronoque,
ZNC, Webster Financial Corporation (Webster), Imagineers,
Mutual of Omaha Bank, and a bank employee, alleging a variety
of state and federal claims, including a RICO claim.
See Doc. #1. In October 2014, I dismissed the
complaint under the Colorado River abstention
doctrine, based on the fact that plaintiff had multiple
pending state court actions arising from the same facts.
See Doc. #53; see also Colorado River Water
Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U.S. 800
(1976).

Plaintiff
appealed the dismissal. While her appeal was pending,
plaintiff reached a settlement agreement with all of the many
defendants except Webster. Plaintiff notified the Second
Circuit of the settlement and moved to withdraw the
defendants involved in the settlement as parties from the
case, leaving Webster as the only defendant. The Second
Circuit granted plaintiff's motion to withdraw the
defendants and then found that the Colorado River
abstention doctrine no longer applied, because plaintiff did
not have any concurrent, parallel actions in state court
pending against Webster. See Smulley v. Mut. of Omaha
Bank, 634 F. App'x 335 (2d Cir. 2016). Accordingly,
the Second Circuit vacated my order dismissing
plaintiff's complaint and remanded to me the case against
Webster-the sole remaining defendant-in April 2016.
Id. at 337.

A few
months after the case was remanded to me, plaintiff decided
to amend her complaint and to join four new defendants: JP
Morgan Chase Bank (Chase), Fannie Mae, the Federal Housing
Finance Agency (FHFA), and Mortgage Electronic Registration
Systems (MERS). Doc. #75. I granted plaintiff's motions
for joinder and to amend. Doc. #90.

The
amended complaint (now the operative complaint in this case)
added allegations against the new defendants. The allegations
relate primarily to actions taken by the defendants in
accordance with a form that plaintiff signed about 12 years
earlier when she refinanced her condominium in 2004. Webster
was the mortgagee in this refinancing, and defendant MERS was
Webster's nominee. At the time of the refinancing,
plaintiff signed a boilerplate form known as “Form
3140, ” a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac multistate condominium
rider form. See Doc. #79 at 55-56;
https://www.fanniemae.com/content/legalform/3140.pdf.
Paragraph F of Form 3140 includes standard language about the
right of the lender to make necessary payments to third
parties if the borrower fails to make such payments in the
first place:

If Borrower does not pay condominium dues and assessments
when due, then Lender may pay them. Any amounts disbursed by
Lender under this paragraph F shall become additional debt of
Borrower secured by the Security Instrument. Unless Borrower
and Lender agree to other terms of payment, these amounts
shall bear interest from the date of disbursement at the Note
rate ...

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